Venue: Chichester

And so as QT drags its sagging body over the final hurdle before being stretchered off to the resuscitation tent for emergency defibrillation your intrepid reporter once again is at the finishing line to report on the least relevant political programme broadcast by the BBC. Fiona Bruce, our genial question mistress, is reported this week as pocketing some £250,000 for her news and politics stint, i.e. reading the autocue and sitting in on the QT panel one hour a week. Of course, what we don’t know is how much she earns through independent programme makers such as Antiques Roadshow and Fake or Fortune. I suspect one may easily double the moolah up to half a million smackers – and possibly way beyond. Those bastard over 75’s better cough up or else we might lose such a glorious asset to a rival TV company. (Parenthetically I should add that a duckduckgo search for Fiona Bruce brings up “mini skirt” and “feet” as top hits. Hmmm…)

I should let you know that I should have been in Los Angeles right now enjoying July 4th festivities aboard the Queen Elizabeth, quaffing a few snifters prior to cruising through the Panama Canal and up the Eastern seaboard before heading back to Blighty. The bastard hernia emergency – blood pressure 210/100 in A & E – put paid to that jaunt, well and truly. If my review this evening is a little more acerbic than on previous occasions just be grateful that Mrs A isn’t doing it because it would consist of a long and indecorous rant. I have come to the conclusion that there is a hell – and it’s called Question Time on a continuous loop.

As a connoisseur of QT I have learnt to spot those moments when our Fiona gets triggered and we had two occasions this evening. The first came when Tom Harwood pointed out that the reason Brexit hasn’t happened is because despite the majority of the electorate voting Leave, the HoC was like the QT panel this evening, four Remainers and one Leaver. Boom! It was as if someone had tried to prise open Fiona’s purse (filth!) and extract one of the fifty quid notes she keeps there in a wad. There was a snap to her response – the usual guff about the Tories and Labour voting to trigger Article 50 and therefore were Leavers – that belied the sweetness and chuckles that normally dribbles from her lips in the Antiques Roadshow. The second occasion was again when Tom Harwood got a mighty response from the audience on Brexit and Fiona felt it incumbent to let us know that “as many were sitting on their hands as were clapping”. Followers of QT and this blog will remember that this is Fiona’s stock response to any vigorous show of support for Brexit from the audience and, I would suggest, is mighty evidence that Tom Harwood was wrong. There were FIVE Remainers and just one Leaver on that panel.

Naturally the question of the Brexit Party’s turning their back on the EU “anthem” (which Fiona gleefully added was called “Ode to Joy” as if to make it sound even worse) came up. Harwood bit back hard on the rest of the panel’s “childish” assertions and asked why so little attention was given to the LibDem’s “Bollocks to Brexit” t-shirts which he rightly termed as both childish and offensive in equal measure. Widders speech in the EU Parliament that day came in for special condemnation from the three Party members which had triggered them big time. It was noticeable that Harwood was given no chance to refute the charges.

Otherwise it was the same old, same old. The flame haired Labour harridan churned out the litany we have all come to know and despise. The QT Bingo words tumbled from her lips like a Vindaloo diarrhoea hitting a fan, spraying the audience with “crashing out”, “food banks”, “child poverty”, “worker’s rights” in a miasma of empty phrases and sound bites. At the other end of the panel the Green loon was allowed to present a manifesto that promised “more green spaces for our children to play in”. Good luck with that luv. Coming from Chichester in West Sussex, an area earmarked for hundreds of thousands of new builds in the next 10 years it will only be the tallest persons with the biggest conks who will be able to survive (joke courtesy of Tony Hancock).

Well, here we are at the end of a series. Summer is a cumin in and thank heavens I can go to bed on a Thursday night and not have to endure this tosh again until the autumn. Oh, and by the way, I shall be missing the first two QTs in September. Mrs A slammed the Cunard brochure in front of my face last week and said “sort out a holiday or you’re dead meat”. We leave Southampton on the 6th September for a two week jolly round the Med and back. Flying Hippo – come in please your time is up!

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